Cinnamon maple
| Cinnamon maple | ||||||||||||
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Cinnamon maple ( Acer griseum ), leaves |
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| Acer griseum | ||||||||||||
| ( Franch. ) Pax |
The cinnamon maple ( Acer griseum ) is a deciduous tree - species from the genus of the maples ( Acer ) in the family of the soap tree plants (Sapindaceae). It comes from central China, the Chinese name is "xuè pí fēng" ( Chinese血 皮 枫).
description
The cinnamon maple forms a slender and high tree crown with curved, rising branches; it often grows with multiple stems and then looks more like a large shrub than a tree. It reaches a height of 20 meters, but rarely more than ten meters in Central Europe. The young twigs are dark reddish and hairy. The hair remains for two or three years, on older branches the bark turns cinnamon brown and stains when touched. The bark is initially smooth; later it comes off in paper-like strips that roll off to the side; the underlying young bark is smooth. The impressive appearance of the bark - the resemblance to dried cinnamon - gave the cinnamon maple its name and justifies the high ornamental value of this plant.
The buds are very small, pointed and almost black. The leaves are opposite and are threefold. The three individual leaflets are three to eight inches long, two to five inches wide and slightly lobed. The approximately five centimeters long petiole is dark pink and initially densely hairy. The autumn color is bright orange to carmine and starts around the beginning of October.
The cinnamon maple is dioecious . The inflorescences usually contain three flowers . The yellow flowers hang on hairy stems; Flowering time is in April to May, at the same time as the leaves shoot. Each flower consists of five sepals and five petals . Male flowers contain ten stamens . The fruits have wings about 3.5 centimeters long and are mostly unfertilized in Central Europe.
distribution
The cinnamon maple is native to western China . The cinnamon maple is widely planted as an ornamental tree in large parts of Europe . While it is about 14 meters high in the British Isles , it usually only reaches six to ten meters in Central Europe , although it is completely hardy here .
Systematics
Within the maple genus, the cinnamon maple is classified in the Trifoliata section . Franchet first described it in 1894 as a subspecies of Acer nikoense , Pax classified it as an independent species in 1902. The related species, such as Acer mandshuricum or Acer triflorum , are all native to East Asia.
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literature
- Helmut Pirc: Maples . Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart (Hohenheim) 1994, ISBN 3-8001-6554-6 , pp. 137 ff .
- Xu Ting-zhi, Chen Yousheng; Piet C. de Jong, Herman J. Oterdoom, Chin-Sung Chang (design): Aceraceae . In: Wu, ZY, Raven, PH (Ed.): Flora of China . Online, accessed December 24, 2013
